Friends of the Earth are Not Friends of Consumers and Taxpayers

By Alan Caruba

On September 27, Friends of the Earth issued a statement to the effect that “Powerful Representative John Dingell (D-MI)—known for his loyalty to the auto industry—stunned many when he joined the likes of Friends of the Earth and Al Gore by announcing his support for a carbon tax.”

It’s doubtful that Dingell took this action without first insuring that auto industry representatives had signed off on it. Corporations prefer knowing the cost of things and will even accept such taxes if they think it means they can factor it into operations and pricing. Given the U.S. auto industry’s errors of judgment in recent times, losing its dominant position in the marketplace to Japanese automakers, going along with carbon taxes is just another big mistake. Consumers take note!

Friends of the Earth thinks that “the rate at which Dingell’s bill taxes carbon is too low to encourage the kind of carbon-cutting we need to stop global warming, the bill represents a serious legislative attempt to use a direct tax to fight global warming.”

What is wrong with this statement? Here’s a hint—there is no global warming beyond the most normal and natural warming that has occurred since the end of the last mini-ice age in the 1800s. The earth is not heating up. It is not going to heat up. If anything, the earth is at the end of a long interglacial period between ice ages. These cycles run from 10,000 to 11,500 years and it has been 11,500 years since the last major ice age ended. We are due for a new ice age.

Global warming? Not likely. Not happening. But the perfect instrument with which the Greens can impose all manner of limitations on the discovery, extraction, and use of energy sources such as oil, natural gas, and coal.

Only reluctantly have Greens come around to endorsing nuclear energy because it is pollution-free. They have fought the construction of new nuclear energy facilities for years, just as they continue to obstruct any new oil drilling at the very time that America needs to reduce its dependency on the Middle East.

The folks at Friends of the Earth know that “a carbon tax (will) put a price on carbon emissions sooner than the complex ‘cap and trade’ proposals currently under consideration, but a carbon tax is also less likely to get bogged down in litigation after it is enacted.”

In the end, they don’t care how people are punished for using oil, natural gas and coal for electricity, to heat their homes, to fuel their cars. What matters is that they be made to pay more for it.

To make it palatable Friends of the Earth know that the Dingell bill must have “a way of refunding to the poor any costs they incur from the tax. The downside of taxing consumption directly is that it can punish the poor who have no choice but to consume…”

What they do not acknowledge is the obvious fact that all of us have no choice either. So, at a time when the dollar is losing value against other currencies and there’s a mortgage and housing crisis, Friends of the Earth demonstrate once again that they are not friends of consumers and taxpayers.

Do you want to pay a carbon tax? No? Then you had better tell your Congress critter before you end up paying to save the earth from something that isn’t happening because the whole theory behind global warming is a fabric of lies.